Less than two years after a former Delaware State Police trooper beat up two teens he thought were pranking his house, which led to a search with a state police helicopter, police dogs, and long rifles, the families of the teens are suing.
At a news gathering in downtown Wilmington on July 16, lawyers for the families said they were suing. A former trooper named Dempsey Walters and several other cops, as well as the Delaware State Police, the New Castle County Police, the Elsmere Police, and the Newport Police, are being charged.
At the news conference, one of the lawyers for the families, Sam Davis, said, “These families still live in the community, and they want to go to sleep at night knowing that this could not happen again, because things have changed.” “There has to be accountability, and with accountability, damages in this case.”
When asked about the suit on July 16, State, County, Elsmere, and Newport cops said they had not heard of it before. The agencies couldn’t say anything because the case was still “active.”
Chris Johnson, another lawyer for the families, said that they are not only asking for money damages, but also for state lawmakers to pass laws that let the public know more about when police examine themselves.
In 2023, two major police reform bills were signed into law. These bills were the result of years of work to make big changes to how accountable and open the police are across the whole state. But state law still says that people can’t find out about police acts that have been criticized without proof.
The police can also use the “investigatory exemption” to keep papers and other evidence related to investigations secret without giving a reason. This means they can hide everything from simple police reports to body camera footage.
“That is also the change we want,” Johnson said. “We want to know what happened and get answers, along with getting some money for each family.” We want things to change. We need to change the laws in Dover.”
What happened?
In April 2024, Walters admitted to breaking a 15-year-old boy’s face while he was handcuffed in the back of a police car. He was charged with multiple felonies and misdemeanors of official misconduct, assault, and loss of civil rights. They were also charged with assaulting a 17-year-old girl who wasn’t part of the prank.
The former trooper was given a year in jail in October.
According to court records, Walters, who is now 31 years old, is in “supervised custody,” which means that the Delaware Department of Corrections’ Probation and Parole is keeping an eye on him.
The Delaware Department of Corrections said Walters got out of jail early because he had earned “good time” points. The lawyer, Davis, said Walters had been in jail for a total of nine months.
The attacks happened on August 21, 2023, after the 15-year-old and some other kids played “ding-dong ditch” in Elsmere.
Video from Walters’ house around 8:30 p.m. showed the 15-year-old boy kicking the trooper’s door and then running away. As per the Delaware Department of Justice, the trooper’s girlfriend at the time called Walters at work to tell him what happened after watching the security video.
As Deputy Attorney General Dan McBride said before, the recording of that call makes it clear that Walters knew his house had been hacked and that no one was trying to get in. McBride said he knew the kids who had kicked in his door were not a threat and that there was no need for help.
However, Walters, who was on duty at the time, told police control that there had been a “attempted home invasion.” This caused a helicopter and a lot of police with dogs and long rifles to descend on the area.
In addition, Walters used a police database to find the home of a 17-year-old boy with whom he had a fight four days before. Then, the ex-convict went to the teen’s house and used a gun to force him out of the hallway.
When he pushed the boy to the ground, he hurt his back by putting his knee into it, McBride said last year. In court, the teen’s mother talked about how horrible it was to hear her child scream on the phone while the cops, whom she said she trusted, hurt him.
According to McBride, Walters later lied to police about getting the teen’s information from a police database. Even though the boy had nothing to do with the joke, he was detained for a while.
A 17-year-old who wasn’t involved was being held when Walters found out that the 15-year-old boy who did it had been caught in a search a few blocks away. “Very forcibly” detaining the teen while Walters arrived, McBride said. The teen was lying face-down on the ground. Plus, the lawyer said, the police had it “under control.”
But Walters hit the 15-year-old with a knee drop like the one he used on the 17-year-old, McBride said. The boy was then led by another cop to a state police SUV and put in the back passenger seat.
McBride said Walters then paced like a “caged bull” until another cop gave him proof that the 15-year-old had kicked in his door. That made Walters hit the kid and turn off his body camera.
The attack was caught on camera because it turns off after 30 seconds. The boy got a shock and his eye socket was broken, which needed 11 screws and a mesh to fix. His lawyer says that the teen was then left in the police car for almost an hour.
McBride said Walters should go to jail for 18 months at the sentencing hearing. But Walters’ defense lawyer, John Malik, told the court that his client’s actions were caused by a “psychic scar” of traumatic stress from being pointed at with a gun in December 2022.
There was a long police chase that finished with more than a dozen officers shooting the suspect on I-95 but killing him.
Malik said Walters was identified with and started getting help for PTSD soon after attacking the teens, which was more than eight months after the gunpoint incident.
The lawsuit and additional complaints about Delaware Department of Justice
The lawsuit, which was brought in New Castle County Superior Court, tries to find out more about what happened that August 2023 night.
Lawyers for the teens’ families said that Katie Jennings, the attorney general of Delaware, “made headlines” when Walters was found guilty under the state’s new Deprivation of Civil Rights law. “Legislation she personally championed,” a news statement from July 16 said.
“Yet when it comes to delivering transparency to the very victims who made her historic conviction possible, the AG’s Office has gone silent,” it said.
The lawyers say the DOJ is “withholding critical body-worn camera and mobile video recorder footage promised to the families by her office.” They say the DOJ told them that they would give them the body camera footage and other materials to look over once “everything’s concluded.”
The Delaware Department of Justice only looked into Walters’ criminal acts.
“The criminal case is now closed,” said Mat Marshall, a spokesman for the Delaware Department of Justice. “In this case, the evidence supported only criminal charges against Walters. Since then, no new charges have been made based on the same evidence.” Each police department decides what kinds of internal policy violations happen, so we would let them handle any questions about less serious violations.
After Walters was charged in 2023, state police said they would “look into any possible policy violations committed by troopers on the scene.”
It looks like Walters’ conviction was the end of this case.
The Delaware Criminal Justice Council’s list of needed law enforcement disclosures showed that Walters was the only one who broke Delaware State Police policy.
The lawyers for Walters said that there had been some talk with the state Department of Justice before he was sentenced. After that, things seemed to change.
Davis, one of the lawyers, said that what they heard from the Delaware Department of Justice when they asked for information about the case was like “crickets.”
But in an email to Delaware Online/The News Journal, Marshall said that “counsel’s comments are misdirected.”
It was made clear that the DOJ is not a part of the case and that the families’ “fight is not with us.”
“Our job was to aggressively prosecute the defendant (Walters) for violating the victims’ civil rights, which we did successfully,” he said. “We don’t know what footage counsel is seeking and are frankly learning today (July 16) about their ongoing interest.”
Marshall also said that eight months ago, one lawyer, Johnson, “communicated an informal discovery request” to the Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust at the DOJ. He was “told then to direct to DSP since, as he knows, the DOJ is conflicted out of the discovery process.”
“As his own statement alludes, we published on day one all of the video evidence that the prosecution used,” he said.
On top of this fight with the state justice department, the families are also suing the people named in the suit for money damages. The case says that the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and 14th Amendments of the Constitution were broken for the teens.
The First Amendment protects people’s freedom of religion, speech, assembly, petition, and the press. The Fourth Amendment keeps people safe from searches and seizures that aren’t necessary. The Fifth Amendment stops the government from going too far, especially when it comes to legal issues. The Eighth Amendment stops cruel and unusual punishments. And the 14th Amendment has the due process and equal protections clause.
The case says the following about how some of those rights were violated:
When the 17-year-old, who wasn’t part of the joke, was dragged out of his house with a gun, thrown to the ground, and sat on in the neck and upper back, the Fourth Amendment was broken.
Walters broke the Eighth Amendment when he punched the 15-year-old boy in the face while he was tied in the back of a police SUV.
The teen who had been punched in the face was not given medical care by the cops, which was against the Fourteenth Amendment. Walters punched the teen twice in the face, and then he was taken to a partially hidden parking lot, where Walters and about 10 other cops waited for almost an hour, Davis said.
The families want both punitive and compensatory damages, as well as their lawyers’ fees, a trial by a jury, and any other help the court “deems just and equitable.”
